


I Was There

by AgentJoanneMills



Series: Blood of Rebirth [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, History, I was on a caffeine trip, One-Shot, Reincarnation, Stargaryen, Supernatural - Freeform, fight me, history nerds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-05-16 16:02:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5831842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentJoanneMills/pseuds/AgentJoanneMills
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A history major studying at the Citadel sets out to write the true history of Daenerys Targaryen, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, and comes to learn just how wrong everything she’s ever learned was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Was There

**Author's Note:**

> *Recognizable elements belong to their respective owners.  
> **Work of fanfiction. No copyright infringement intended.  
> ***Summary c/o starkyd7. (because I suck at those lol)

 

Arya Stark will be going to war prepared.

And yes, she’s always prepared, but this time is different.

Today, she’s prepared _and_ she’s got a purpose in mind.

 

Today, she’s gonna beat that annoying, stuck-up little brat in her own game.

 

****

 

It all started out innocently enough.

Arya’s a history major, and she loves reading up on events from times past. She’s a bit obsessed with the Age of Conquest, and Queen Visenya is like, her personal hero. Her brother Jon often teases her about an entire wall in her room, which is practically a shrine devoted to the fierce Dragonlords of old. Whatever. Dragons are cool. Her only regret in life is not being alive when they still existed.

Anyway, her major being what it is, Arya is of course enrolled in the Old Citadel, which is undoubtedly the premier educational institution for wannabe historians (and there are other programmes included, but Arya does not particularly care about those). It has produced the best maesters and professors across the ages, and Arya will do everything she can to be one of those herself.

Her dream is to one day write a book about the Fall of the Dragons, when the Year of the False Spring arrived and the Targaryen regime was toppled, and she wants to write about the Dragons reborn, when Queen Daenerys Targaryen reclaimed what was taken away from her.

Arya believes it is a worthy enterprise. Daenerys is one of her favorite Targaryens, possibly even more than Visenya. She was an exile princess in Essos, but that did not stop her from getting what she wanted. She even had _three_ actual dragons, the first ones to roam the skies since their kind died out during the reign of Aegon III, the Unlucky, the Dragonbane. The one Daenerys rode in battle was named Drogon, said to have been the spitting image of Balerion’s—the Black Dread, upon whom King Aegon I conquered the Seven Kingdoms—in both color and size by the time they flew over the Narrow Sea to reclaim the Iron Throne.

Plenty of songs and books are already dedicated to the voyages of Queen Daenerys. However, since her time coincided with that of the Wight War’s, a lot of the more historically accurate accounts had also been destroyed in storms of both ice and fire. Thus, the existing chronicles are believed to be either watered-down versions, exaggerated versions, or drunken-minstrel versions. Arya’s goal is to produce something that will be the _real version_.

She’s been going through the Citadel’s archives for anything remotely linked to Daenerys Targaryen, and it was during one of such research sessions that Arya met _her_.

 

Daena Velaryon is a student of archaeology, and also one of the top students in the Citadel. She has dark hair and purple eyes, and Arya finds herself fascinated at first because she’s pretty sure Daena’s got at least some drops of Old Valyrian blood in her veins—no way such brilliant shade of purple could be from contact lenses, and she’s got the name to boot.

The fascination, however, was a bit short-lived.

Daena Velaryon turned out to be a stuck-up little bratty know-it-all.

 

Arya first saw her in the Targaryen Reign section of the Citadel’s library, tucked in a secluded table, surrounded by a mountain of thick and dust-covered books. A huge memo pad was in front of her, and she was studiously taking down notes. Arya saw several overlapping lines, and at the outset it did not make much sense to her. But then she realized that the girl was actually drawing a family tree of the Targaryen line.

An exceptionally detailed and impressively thorough family tree, dating back to Aegon the Conqueror himself.

And Arya was intrigued, and she was much too excited to see someone who appeared to be as interested with the study as she was. So she decided to strike up a conversation.

Arya cleared her throat to announce her presence, and Daena looked up, and Arya faltered for a second. The girl was seriously, breathtakingly beautiful. Dark hair haphazardly framed a pale, almost ethereal face, and there was something in those purple eyes that made Arya’s breath catch—recognition, hope, joy?—but it was blinked away before she can properly identify it.

“Yes?” was the first word she heard from those pink lips, and her voice struck a resonant chord somewhere deep within Arya’s soul.

Arya cleared her throat again, tried to regain her balance—because that first look at Daena’s face made her feel as if her world suddenly became off-kilter, as if all the world’s physical laws did not apply anymore. It was with great effort that she finally was able to introduce herself.

 

Daena, initially, was a very accommodating conversationalist. Arya quite enjoyed the free exchange of information, and it didn’t hurt that Daena was not bad to look at. At all.

But then Arya pointed at Daena’s work and commented on why one Daenerys Targaryen was listed as wife to a Martell when she had been _obviously_ married to another lost Targaryen, and how the dragon names ascribed to each Targaryen had not been officially confirmed.

Daena huffed an annoyed breath, and launched an explanation on how Daenerys Targaryen, the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms for several prosperous decades, was _obviously_ not the Daenerys Targaryen who was used as barter for Dorne’s fealty under King Daeron II Targaryen’s rule.

“She was mostly blotted out of history,” Daena said, wistfully. “She was supposedly mentioned in Maester Yandel’s manuscript of the histories, which was written during the False King Tommen’s reign. But that was destroyed in the Great Fire of King’s Landing, along with a lot of treasures of note, if I may add.”

“Yeah,” Arya tilts her head in contemplation, “but most of those were _intentionally_ destroyed to eradicate the Lannister taint in the Red Keep’s halls. The maesters’ annals say that Daenerys’ own Queensguard threw into dragonfire everything that had the Lions’ seal.”

“Queensguard?” Daena frowned at her in confusion. “Daenerys had no Queensguard. After Ser Barristan the Bold died in Meereen, she refused to form another one. Especially since her own father was killed by a member of the order supposed to protect him with their lives.”

“Well, okay, but didn’t she have that Wolf Knight? The one they said had direwolf blood. Maester Tarly’s _The Wolves of Winterfell_ identified her as Arya Stark—my namesake, by the way”—and Arya did not see Daena’s eyes flash with something almost like _fire_ —“and according to him, she was Daenerys’ Queensguard for the duration of her sovereignty.”

“That . . . is not true,” Daena disagreed. “Though the Wolf Knight did fill a capacity akin to a Queensguard, it was not her official post. She was more like a . . . personal warrior.”

“How is that different from a Queensguard?”

“Arya Stark”—and Arya felt a chill down her spine when Daena uttered her name, though it _wasn’t_ really her—“possessed a certain skill set that the Dragon Queen employed in delicate matters, and her actions were not always officially sanctioned. Everything she did, however, was in service of her Queen. Her loyalty knew no bounds, and her devotion was unequaled.” There was a defensive edge in Daena’s voice, and it confounded Arya.

It was almost like . . . like Daena had a personal attachment to the Wolf Knight.

“You sound really sure of this,” Arya commented instead.

Daena started at the observation, and she ducked her head. “I read it somewhere.”

“I am pretty sure there’s no book about that,” Arya said. “If there was, I would have read it by now.”

“It’s from a private collection.”

Arya raised her eyebrows. “Private collection?”

“What, you haven’t thought of that?” Daena questioned. “One of the best sources of material in studying history comes from personal records of the parties involved. I’m sure you know this.”

Arya stared at her blankly.

Daena sighed. “If you really wanted to get details about that time, you should be scouring accounts from the Old Houses for connections to the Dragon Queen’s quests. Maesters keep secrets for the lords they serve, and they were known for their tendency to write things down, even if the information was sensitive.”

“If that’s true, why have the records not resurfaced yet? It’s been eons, and there’s still a glaring void in the annals about that time.”

“That’s because unearthing Targaryen secrets could lead to unearthing other secrets many would not want revealed,” Daena inferred, and Arya kind of saw her point. “After all, most of the Old Houses allied to Queen Daenerys still stand today. Sometimes, the past tarnish the present and the future in irrevocable ways. It could lead to major problems.”

“Still, aren’t people entitled to the truth?”

“Yes, they are.” Daena shrugged. “I don’t really know why no one has filled that so-called void yet, but maybe it’s just waiting for the right time, the right person. And looking for information is not an easy task, either. Reliable information, even more so.”

Arya considered her with narrowed eyes. “As someone who has apparently given this issue a lot of thought, where do you suggest I go first for this endeavor?”

Daena hummed contemplatively. “House Stark, I imagine, would be good place to start.” She appraised Arya. “You are from _the_ House Stark, are you not?”

“What, are you doubting me?”

“Not really,” Daena looked at her, scrutinizing. “Well, fine, you do have the Northern bearing, I’ll give you that.”

“Yeah, yeah, blood of Winterfell,” Arya rolled her eyes. “I just might follow your suggestion, you know. These”—she gestured to Daena’s notes—“look impressive.”

“Thanks.”

“Though, really? I thought they said Drogon was as big as Balerion.”

“That is a gross exaggeration,” Daena sounded peeved.

Naturally, that conversation turned into an all-out argument regarding several aspects of the subject matter.

Daena had a refutation against everything Arya said. And as someone who prided herself with her considerable knowledge in this chosen field, it was easy for Arya to feel weary at being one-upped again and again.

So that afternoon—the last day before winter break, as luck would have it—Arya swore that she would read up during her vacation and she would turn her family’s ancestral home upside down to find _anything_ that could help her cause.

 

****

 

Arya marches resolutely to Daena’s corner, and she finds the girl in a setup similar to the one she was in when they first met. Books lie open on the table, though now, Daena is typing on a laptop instead of writing on paper. She is also wearing reading glasses, and Arya’s brain short-circuits for a moment.

Whoa.

She’s . . . she’s prettier than Arya remembers. She’s got a little frown of concentration that Arya wants to smooth over, and there are some strands of dark hair falling over purple eyes that Arya wants to brush away with her hand.

And. Wait. Where did those came from?

Shaking herself out of her daze and remembering why she went here in the first place, Arya walks closer, until she’s right in front of Daena.

Daena looks up when a shadow falls upon the page she’s reading, and twin eyebrows rise up in surprise. “Stark.”

“Velaryon,” Arya nods. “I did what you suggested.”

Daena seems baffled at first, before her face clears to one of understanding. “Oh. And?”

 

Arya tells her about how Robb Stark was said to have been able to change into a wolf in battle; Daena rejoins with how it was not necessarily true—it was possible that what they were saying was Robb Stark could enter the mind of his direwolf, but he could not _become_ the wolf itself. “He was a skinchanger, not a shapeshifter,” Daena says.

Arya tells her that Daenerys had a choice of grooms, but she favored her last kin, the lost son of her own brother Rhaegar—Jon Targaryen. Daena’s face becomes even paler when Arya mentions this, but her voice is as cold as a Northern winter. “Queen Daenerys did not _favor_ Jon. She was _obligated_ to marry him to continue the Targaryen line.” The words are dripping with derision.

Then Arya tells her that Arya Stark was a cold-blooded assassin. She was ruthless and brutal, and she killed too many people to count.

At this Daena, very quietly, replies, “The Wolf Knight was the most honourable person in the Red Keep during Queen Daenerys’ rule. The Queen considered her a hero. Do not talk about her that way.”

Arya scowls. “ _How?_ ”

 “How what?”

“How do you know these things?” Arya braces her arms on the table, leaning closer to Daena, who is avoiding her gaze. “Everything I say you contradict, and you provide a reasonable enough explanation for them for me to believe that you’re right. It’s confusing because the details are not published in anything, they are not common knowledge, and yet they make sense. They’re like pieces of a puzzle finally coming into place. And I don’t understand how you have those pieces.” Arya’s eyes are calculating. “So _how_?”

Daena finally lifts her gaze, and purple eyes hold captive grey ones. Now Arya can see that there is indeed a fire burning underneath, and a raw kind of power—mighty, barely restrained. And _old_ —as if it has burned for thousands of years, and there is no sign of it being extinguished anytime soon.

And the four words she says in response will be the beginning of Arya Stark’s unraveling.

“Because I was there.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Original Prompt:  
> “I’m a history major and I keep getting into arguments with one of my classmates about things because they keep saying I’m wrong so I finally scream, ‘how would you know?!?’ and they’re like, ‘because I was THERE!’ and that’s how we all find out that there is a centuries-old vampire taking our British history class” AU
> 
> Except they were just the two people in the room from secret-keeping purposes. And of course, I used Westeros history. I knew purchasing that Untold History of Westeros volume would come in handy. ;))  
> Also there was no shouting. Because it happened in a library.  
> So I don’t know if this counts as answer to the prompt. Lol.


End file.
